


Sam Wilson Isn't Getting Paid Enough For This Sh*t

by Noccalula



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A day in the life of Sam Wilson, Counselor - Freeform, Gen, Humor, Light-Hearted, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Sam Wilson: Superhero and Counselor, This is bro-Sam and not ship Sam but I suppose if you squint you could make it happen, avenger - Freeform, friend, ish anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4538520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easy to forget that before he became Falcon, one of the elite Avengers team, Sam Wilson was a trained counselor who provided PTSD counseling and facilitated group sessions. </p><p>Now that he's a superhero, a lot has changed - except that he's still everyone's counselor, whether he signed up for it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam Wilson Isn't Getting Paid Enough For This Sh*t

**Author's Note:**

> Coming off of Church Bells, I wanted to write something a little lighthearted (but still sad at points, be warned) so here we are. 
> 
> I've been a career advocate for various causes and if there's one thing you learn in the job it's that it never really leaves you, no matter where you are. Sam and his compassion, excellent listening skills and ability to hold space for people needed a highlight. 
> 
> Because Sam Wilson is the man.

**5:45 am**  

Sam’s alarm – Beaker from The Muppets singing “Ode to Joy”, because it makes him smile – goes off when he’s already laying there awake. Sam Wilson is one of those people who wakes up five minutes before the alarm goes off unless he’s hung over or sick, and he’s come to greatly relish that five minutes of calm quiet in his dark apartment in the training facility; he contemplates himself as one tiny little conscious vibration experiencing its particular view of the known universe. He gets existential in the morning more than he does at night, when he feels more alive and less prone to digging through his own soul in lieu of just doing what feels good. Both of his parents were morning people – he’s only been able to become one by force via the military. He lies there, eyes unfocused in the half-light and dreamily considering the fact that he’s alive and awake for another day, another chance for adventure and joy and  _holy shit_  he has to piss so bad he can barely roll over to get up lest he explode. He casts off his light gray bedding and climbs out with a groan, both feet on the cool wood laminate floor.

Another day begins.

 

**6:10 am**

Sam plays the new Frank Ocean with his nifty new Bluetooth shower speaker and sings along, trying and failing to hit the high notes. Frank speaks to him in a way no one has since Marvin. He contemplates how many times people bring up Marvin Gaye and Trouble Man to him in the course of a day; all it took was one time to Steve Rogers and it became their inside joke, the touchstone Steve always reaches for when he needs to realign them on common ground. Sam appreciates that – it’s everybody else wanting to bring it up that bothers him, as though he’s not capable of liking more than one thing or more than one style. He’s got musical diversity, dammit! His iPod is a grab-bag of a little bit of everything. Music is hugely important to Sam – he plays it all the time, no matter what he’s doing or where he’s going, unless he’s in combat and having to keep his focus sharp. He listens to classical music when he runs. He plays fifties Rat Pack standards when he’s getting ready to go out. He feeds his ears a steady diet of new stuff but always goes back to his favorites: Outkast, Postal Service, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads, The Roots, Prince, TV On The Radio, Rollins Band. He tried to give Steve some Rollins Band to use while lifting weights – which is when Sam appreciates Henry Rollins’ furious barking the most – and it jarred the super soldier so much he went back to playing nothing but Glen Miller for three weeks. Eventually, Sam got him into electro-swing, and he considers it a big victory.

But there’s so much really, really good new-or-new-ish music out there. Sam’s really liking Chvrches, which surprises him. Frank Ocean is his new favorite, and he really likes what he’s heard of FKA Twigs and thinks her stuff is going to end up on his Getting Freaky Bedroom Mix, same with Mikky Ekko, he’s STILL not sure how he feels about Drake –

Sam realizes he’s overshowered by ten minutes while off in thought and hurries to get back on his schedule. That ten minutes is gonna bother him all day.

 

**6:40 am**

Sam re-confirms in his gmail – he still uses gmail for his personal goings-ons – that he will be hosting the Skype group for PTSD support. He hates that he’s too far away to host them in person anymore, but his group was attached to him and he loves the fact that, as long as no missions come up, he can still be their counselor. The new in-person facilitator stays on backup rotation just in case he cannot fulfill his duties – the session would have to go on, people with PTSD need consistency from their mental health providers – but he does his damndest to make sure that never happens.

Sam is a counselor, no matter where he is. They aren’t his only clients. Not anymore.

 

**7:45 am**

Naturally, Steve had something smart to say when he was late to the gym for their morning cardio, the less stigmatized name for what is essentially Steve’s session. They work sometimes in groups but often times one on one with the Cap or Natasha to prep them for the daily round of combat training, and it gives him the perfect chance to debrief with Steve without disrupting their carefully arranged schedules or making Steve feel like he’s being put under a microscope. The training is just muscle memory for Sam – he’s far from a poor study in this department given that he was one of the few that walked in with above average experience. He and Rhodey pair up often given that they’re the only two on one another’s levels in this department – but there’s always something new to learn, and he loves learning. He was  _that_ kid.

“Busy singin’ in the shower?” Steve smiles, hands on his hips and pleasant faced though Sam knows better than almost anyone else the kind of weight that he lives under all day, every day, “You almost got that high note this time.”

“I’m gonna need you to stop watchin’ me in the shower, man,” Sam teases back, smirking as he goes to pick up a water bottle.

“Ha ha,” Steve deadpans, hopping up onto a balance beam to sit while Sam moves to the mat to get in his crunches.

This is when Steve is the most comfortable speaking intimately, when he’s not being stared at and when Sam can at least give the illusion of being preoccupied; he’s too lost in his own head when he’s the one working out, and in a perfect fit of situation, Sam feels like he listens better when he’s moving anyway. Kinesthetic learner, his teachers called him.

“What if we don’t find him, Sam?” Steve asks softly, his hands around the sides of the beam and gripping as his knuckles increasingly whiten, “It could be years. Buck knows how to hide, always did.”

“We’ll find him,” Sam grunts between sit-ups, reminding himself to keep his core tight and his abs engaged so he’s not just repeatedly pulling at his back instead, “We got access to some of the best intelligence equipment in the world, he can’t hide forever.”

That’s not what Steve is really asking, Sam knows. Steve wants to know if Bucky is going to run from him forever, if he’ll resist a reunion and make an already devastating situation even worse. Sam tries to refrain from assuming the relationship between Steve and Bucky is romantic – they came from an era where sentimentality was somehow both more lauded and more acceptable between boys as best friends, and there’s the added complication of the fact that if Bucky ever stops running and comes back to Steve, they will be the only things one another has left from their early lives. The only thing. Sam tries to consider not having his childhood photos or his mom and dad on the other end of the line when he dials and it’s like picturing himself without a head – it just makes no sense. Alternately, he knows that there’s an intensity to Steve’s need to find him that speaks more than his words ever do.

They might have been in love. They might not have been. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Steve loves Peggy, was  _in_  love with her a long time ago and had to deal with losing her and then accepting that she was now at the end of her life, dying slowly but gracefully of old age. But Sam is new school – he knows sexual spectrum is a thing, and he knows that sometimes love has nothing to do with sexual attraction. He thinks of Riley and knows that he loved someone fiercely and lost them horribly and that it would be a slap in the face to their friendship to try to distance himself from that love out of fear of being labeled something that had nothing to do with them.

Sam spent a lot of time at the beginning of their friendship reassuring Steve that, no, bisexuality did not phase him and yes, it was totally okay for him to not know what he was or how he felt and no, he would not be looking at him any differently even though yes, homophobia and biphobia still existed, no matter how many people tried to insist to him that it was “totally different” nowadays. Different, yes. Great, not by a longshot.

But that’s neither here nor there. All he knows is he’s hunting Steve’s best friend until Steve chooses to inform him otherwise and any notions outside of that are summarily cast aside.

“We got a ping in Belarus,” Steve admits, rubbing the back of his neck and sweating magnificently, “But it was gone just as fast as it came and I couldn’t pull you away from training just to check that out.”

Sam stops, grunting with exertion as he pulls himself into a sitting position and stares back over at Steve with concern as he also sweats magnificently, “You can always pull me away from training to check that out. Steve, that’s how we’re gonna get this done, following leads and all. They won’t miss us that much for a few days if-“

Steve shakes his head, his face entirely too expressive to hide the disappointment in his eyes at the facts, “He’s already gone. I got the footage over to Nat but there’s nothing we can pull from it yet. I appreciate it, but I’m gonna save that for when we have a bigger lead.”

Shrugging, Sam moves to resume his crunches, cursing at himself for losing count, “S’why you’re the Captain, Rogers. Just tell me when we’re going.”

 

**8:45 am**

Were Sam a braver man, he’d have asked Natasha out by now. He can fly through one of the most heavily patrolled war zones in the Middle East with nothing but the wing suit on, take on homicidal robots and evacuate a floating country but asking the Black Widow if she wants to get some coffee sometime? Forget it. It helps that it’s a purely physical interest on his part – he likes Natasha a lot, she’s got a wickedly funny dry wit for someone who comes across so seriously, but Sam hasn’t met anyone he had feelings for in a long time. He used to stress about it, but his inner counselor reminds him that it will come when it comes and looking for it desperately is the quickest way to make sure he won’t find it. Besides, work has kind of become his life at this point. He’s more married to dragging Bucky Barnes back to the United States kicking and screaming than he ever could be to a person at the moment.

Still, that physical attraction highlights how badly he needs to get laid every time he gets pinned to the floor by Natasha. His vision blurs when his face collides with the mat but it clears enough for him to see Rhodey smirking off to the side, drinking his bottle of water as if to say “but that ain’t none of my business.”

Natasha’s another one whose feelings don’t come out easily. She doesn’t talk to fill the silence like a lot of people do and meters out her words like she’s on some sort of limit she can’t go over, like her programming tells her every morning upon waking that she’s got 1,634 words permitted for today and she needs to use them sparingly. Any conversation deeper than surface level is usually a gravelly admittance of concern about Wanda Maximoff or Steve. Steve has proven to be good conversation material with many people, all of whom ask Sam how he  _really_  is, if he’s  _really_  okay as though it’s something he can divulge to them in so many easy words.

Sam brought up Bruce Banner by accident once, stopping himself as soon as the name left his mouth and cutting his eyes over at her in fear that he had somehow horribly mis-stepped.

Natasha’s movements only hitched for a second as she worked on tying up another punching bag, her eyes on her hands as they secured the hook before she gave the only thing she was willing to say on the subject: “It was a mistake.” He didn’t press again, accidentally or purposefully.

Natasha was much more fond of taking her issues out in the ring as it were. Sam and Steve could spar for however long it took the non-enhanced half of the duo to tap out and he knew to expect a workout, but with Natasha he knew to expect bruises and soreness and occasionally having his clock utterly cleaned. Today she does all of the above, and he leaves training feeling like he just got mugged in a mosh pit but the small smile that she throws at him tells him he did the most therapeutic thing he could for her today.

That makes him feel better.

 

**10:15 am**

Sam makes a gentle, casual attempt to get Wanda to tell him how she’s holding up.

She gives him a withering glare and picks up her cereal, moving to another part of the mess hall.

 

**10:57 am**

“It is as if I’ve been torn asunder, Son of Will. As though I am rend unto two different versions of myself, one that existed before and one that exists now, and I worry that there will be no light strong enough to shed itself up on that darkest part of my soul.”

Thor has stopped by Sam’s makeshift office as he now does twice a month, almost like clockwork, to wax philosophical about the troubles of ruling the kingdom, seeking the stones that he believes are the answer to this giant puzzle he surmises they are all a part of, all of which feels remarkably above Sam’s paygrade. The Asgardian either forgets or dismisses the fact that every time, Sam reminds him that he has to be in Intelligence Training at eleven sharp because they’re supposed to be learning the new tech that Stark sends over ever week for field testing and Hill  _hates_  it when people are late. It falls on deaf ears. Apparently not everyone who carries the burden of heroism is so stoic about holding in their feelings.

“I am a man who looks towards the sun, the future,” Thor pauses, hand out as if he were a particularly subtle but effective performer on a Shakespearean stage before closing it slowly, gazing at his own palm as if it holds all the answers but simply won’t tell him, “Why can I not stop dwelling in the past, my spirit refusing to stop kneeling at the death of my brother?”

Thor pauses and glances over at him, and he can see tears in the demi-God’s eyes. Sam’s face softens. He’ll just have to apologize to Hill later, maybe with coffee.

 

**12:06 pm**

Sam has a lunchtime routine: green salad with grilled chicken breast and extra boiled eggs, light ranch dressing, whatever electrolyte concoction that the training facility insists has less sugar than Gatorade which is more or less soda these days, a giant bottle of water and two pieces of whatever fruit is in season at the time. He loves this routine. Sam would eat the same thing every day if he could by nature and in here he more or less can – he finds his life is much simpler when he simplifies the little inconsequential choices down to just the barest few. It gives him more time and energy to pursue loftier ambitions, like trying to get Wanda Maximoff to realize that he’s not going to prod, he just wants to be her friend or campaigning to get Rhodey to ask Stark to just take a look at the wings and make improvement suggestions or hunting down a damn near octogenarian super soldier spy that happens to be his new best friend’s best friend and bringing him back to America alive and in at worst two pieces.

Maybe he’ll take three extra boiled eggs today.

 

**12:52 pm**

Because Sam took the extra boiled eggs, he makes it a point to shut his office door and spare the others the consequence of that choice.

Maybe he’ll get one of those diffusers or something from TJ Maxx next time he goes to get shirts.

 

**1:10 pm**

Facebook break. Sam sees that his ex-girlfriend is now engaged to a guy they loosely knew in college. It tugs on his chest only a little: their breakup was amicable but hard, and she deserves to be really, truly happy. He reminds himself that, aside from some loneliness that becomes all the more apparent at moments like this, he really is  _really_ , truly happy too. He does a job that he loves, that matters. He has had his hands in moments that saved the world. He values Steve and Natasha and Rhodey and he thinks that maybe sometime soon he’ll get a breakthrough with Wanda. Vision still freaks him out but he reminds himself not to show it.

He looks at their engagement photo, her beautiful round face staring back at the man who put that tasteful but bland ring on her finger and clicks “Like”.

 

**2:15 pm**

An email comes in from Rhodey.

_Falcon,_

_You’ve got a three-thirty meeting with Tony when he gets here to pick me up. His attention span is about fifteen minutes long so get something bright and shiny – like your suit – and make it work._

_Don’t say I never did anything for you,_

_Lt. Col. James Rhodes_

Sam grins from ear to ear, half because he might finally get the tech upgrade he’s been dying for and half because Rhodey signs his personal emails with his rank and addresses him as “Falcon”.

 

**3:50 pm**

Tony is fashionably late and holding a cup of Starbucks when he first comes into Sam’s office, whipping off his sunglasses with a much more tired aplomb than one might expect from the flamboyant billionaire.

“Alright, where’s the canary? I need to see these wings.”

 

**4:13 pm**

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing now, you know? I’m single again. I’m in my forties, I’m moving out of that ripe bachelor age soon – I mean, it can be carried for a long time depending on what all you’ve got going on, but even Clooney gave up and got married eventually. I really, really thought I’d cave before Clooney did and if you knew him you’d know why, but to be fair Amal is a real catch so I wasn’t too terribly surprised that it was her that did him in. But bachelor, single life. It’s all fun and games until you can’t drink anymore, isn’t it? Until you’re trying to maintain sobriety and then the only real coping mechanism you have for having your heart broken is more or less gone, and there’s not a lot of people you can talk to without worrying about where that information is going to end up…”

Tony stops rolling his glasses between his palms long enough to use a stem to point at Sam across the desk, the billionaire splayed comfortably across the fashionably modern chair across from his desk.

“…which, I don’t suppose I should remind you but I will, we’re under client confidentiality now and my people will send over an airtight contract, so please don’t be an asshat and speak to anyone about this.”

“You’re not my client,” Sam reminds him dryly.

“Yes I am, I just hired you,” Tony responds with light incredulity, holding up his palms and shrugging, “For the price of one pair of supped-up wings. Anyway, I had suggested that Pepper and I see a marriage counselor before and even though we both thought it was a good idea, I just knew that there was-“

 

**5:03 pm**

“We should have left over an hour ago, Tony,” Rhodey groans from the doorway, pinching the bridge of his nose, “It’s five o’clock, I’m sure Mr. Wilson has somewhere to be.”

Sam does and it’s called Chipotle but this is for his equipment, after all, so he’s not in much of a position to rush Tony out of the door. He’s imminently grateful for Rhodey doing the honors.

“Keep your pants on, Rhodey,” Tony says, standing and smoothing his suit jacket as he looks across at the counselor-superhero who just wants to melt into the floorboards to escape, “Thanks, Wilson. You’re a better listener than Doctor Banner.”

There’s a small quirk of his lips that’s supposed to be a smile but Sam picks up what Tony doesn’t even realize he’s putting down – he misses Bruce. Horribly. He’s alone, without Pepper and having alienated most people who cared about him and he’s still torn somewhere between the just-out-of-reach self-actualization that he’s got a lot to be sorry for and the defensive, knee-jerk power swim back into It’s Not My Fault territory. The guy’s got issues, but he’s beyond intelligent and if he could just find the balance between holding himself responsible and flogging himself out of self-loathing that stemmed directly from self-obsession, he could probably be alright enough to hold down a real relationship and quit pissing off the people who love him.

That little near-smile was the closest thing to out-loud gratitude he was going to get, so he’ll take it.

 

**6:11 pm**

Steve is already sitting down at a table, having endured the torture of smelling the inside of Chipotle without being able to order since his company wasn’t there and he was far too polite to eat without him, when Sam comes in with an exhausted sigh, dying for a burrito bowl and about three hours in a hot tub.

“Where have you been?” Steve asks with a lilt that would have been teasing were it not for the edge of aggression that hunger snuck in between the lines, “Trapeze lessons?”

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ real good at this balancing act of mine,” Sam deadpans as they both move to get in line, trying to ignore the looks from other patrons.

 

**6:59 pm**

Sam sits down at his computer, feeling like he’s made entirely out of lead. It would have been easy to dismiss Thor’s feelings as overdramatic or Tony’s as self-indulgent if he were the kind of person that believed in doing that, assuming that people didn’t have the right to feel however they did, but no one who looked into both their eyes and saw what he saw – one man who was grieving his brother as hard and full-heartedly as he wished the other could grieve his relationship – could have turned them away. That’s what he thought, even though he knew there were those who might have.

Thor and Tony will talk – god will they both talk – about what’s hurting them once the conditions are right. He has to take a can opener to Steve and Natasha to get anything deeper than surface level. Wanda won’t even sit beside him at lunch, too busy using her anguish as a security blanket to make sure no one gets close enough.

Sam is surrounded by people who need therapists. He’s pretty sure he needs one himself. People who carry the emotional weights of others often need help managing their own. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Most often, he feels good about being able to help people see the forest for the trees, even if the results often take years to manifest.

He has eighteen new emails. His college friend Andre has sent him a file, the No Kings album by Doomtree. He listens to “Team The Best Team” and falls in love instantly.

 

**7:29 pm**

Sam opens up the Skype chat and watches as eight familiar faces pop up in the various boxes.

The most genuine smile moves across his face and he feels something he can only describe as gratitude to see all of them again – his beloved PTSD support group.

“Hi guys,” he says, his heart already feeling lighter, “How is everyone?”

 

**8:51 pm**

They go over the hour time slot, as usual.

 

**9:34 pm**

Sam plays “Own Yours” on repeat while he reads the new Psychology Today. There’s a bullshit article about Bipolar II and even without clinical training he can see the holes in the theory, but he’s not getting paid to investigate mental illness. He wasn’t even doing that as a counselor.

He considers that maybe one day, if he survives all this superhero business, he’ll retire and get his psychiatric doctorate. The consideration only lasts a few seconds. He’s far less interested in diagnosing and prescribing than he is in providing support. There was a time in his life where a military counselor saved him, a night of long drinking and sobbing as he thought of Riley and his failed relationship and how the world was full of awful, terrible things he was powerless to stop or control. Someone on base called Family Support and sent out the counselor who sat with him all night, listening to him talk for hours until he finally tired himself out.

From that night forward, he had an appointment twice a week until his discharge, when he decided to undergo the training to facilitate his own group specifically for PTSD.

 

**9:52 pm**

Sam emails her a note just to say thank you, the way he usually does a couple of times a month. She never gets tired of hearing it.

 

**10:00 pm**

Sam lays in bed and says a silent “thank you” to the universe, God, whatever anyone calls it.

There are things he still needs, but he’ll find them. Maybe tomorrow.


End file.
